My companion and I have been able to physically see the blessings that have come as we have made an effort to do better and improve ourselves as missionaries. We sat down one day this week and had a mini comp inventory saying these are the things we’re not going to do anymore and this is what we will do to be better. We have had many blessings come from this small yet simple effort. We found ourselves placed in the places we needed to be and talking to people who were more prepared by God to receive us. Bendiciones!
This week we had a half-mission conference where Elder Arnold from the 70 came to our mission to instruct us. It was really long, but we learned lots. He taught us a bunch of different techniques to try in our missionary work. It was a lot better than last year’s where Elder Bennett scolded us all. This guy was loving and instructive, which is a lot more effective I would say. We were all pretty tired after it because it went from 8am to 4.
We visited the Montano kids again and we taught a well-needed lesson on swearing and profanity. I had the revelation to use Jenga! We borrowed the hermana missionaries’ Jenga tower and so we built it up and Elder Lawson and I role played saying different mean things to each other and we had our tablets with the alarms up so we made different sound effects for the bad words haha. With every sound effect, we knocked down the tower little by little until we just smacked it all down. Then we had them build it back up by giving compliments to each other and every compliment you could put a couple blocks up. It was great!! Then we had them make the comparison to how much time it took to wreck the tower and how much longer it took to build it back up. I love teaching kids!!!
We also had a lesson with Manuel Pinto. He’s pretty dang solid, he has more potential than I first gave him credit for! In our most recent lesson he understood that he has to be baptized by immersion to enter the kingdom of a God and he said the closing prayer and he thanked God for us helping him MAGNIFICENTLY is what he said. It made us happy for him.
We had a spiritual moment with a member family this week. We had dinner with our WML the Sánchez family, they’re so amazing. We somehow got talking about my band and I how I’m a rocker and whatnot and they were all SO intrigued! They kept asking about it and stuff and they even looked me up and saw my pics and stuff haha. We continued talking and I actually looked to Elder Lawson to share a spiritual message and invitation but he didn’t have anything so I felt prompted to share 2 Nephi 25:26 and we thanked them for their examples and raising their kids so well. The Spirit then filled the room as Hermana Sánchez started crying and said that the example she was grateful for was mine. She admired me for having sacrificed all my music and my band to go serve a mission....it was really cool. I truly felt that I lifted them up just by being who I am.
The highlight of this week was that Zahira from Bella Vista was baptized! We drove down to Falls Church for her baptism and it was so awesome to see all the members there and to see Zahira baptized! Her mom is Patricia who was baptized when I was still there. Patricia actually spoke on baptism at her daughter’s baptism haha! It was great. Elder Nield baptized her. After her baptism, we hurried back to Reston for our ward party! We had the Noche de Hispanidad this Saturday. There wasn’t as many people as I thought there would be but we got a less active to go and a member to bring their non-member friends! It was great. We talked to a ton of people, ate a ton of food from just about every Latin country and they had a few dances 
🏽 too.
Yesterday, Kevin Hernandez FINALLY received the Aaronic Priesthood! We participated in the circle and it was awesome for him to see him get it! Yesterday we also saw Cecilio Lara for the first time in forever! He’s doing well. We had a pretty successful night, we saw Steve Rivera and we visited the Echeverría family because we felt prompted to. It was like 8:30 at this point with a 15 min drive home but we still decided to see them and found out their daughter has been sick and so we were able to give a blessing! It was a great week. Have a wonderful thanksgiving and stay safe in your travels! Elder Lawson and I saw the longest parade of planes we had ever seen in the night sky the other day coming in to Dulles airport so stay safe and enjoy the week with your family!
Hispanic night — all the flags fell down lol
I will send pics of the baptism when I get them.
Dear All,
We just had Elder Neil L. Andersen speak to us both yesterday and Saturday!! It was such a special opportunity. We all as a mission went as missionaries on Saturday and he gave us lots of great insights of how to achieve our baptismal goal of 365 by the end of this year. He encouraged us to get to know the members well enough to know what they like, what they are like and all that so we can be able to get to know their friends. Yesterday he spoke at the Oakton Stake center but we ended up at the Reston chapel because there was a broadcast. Apparently, at the Oakton Stake center was the Spanish translation and it took an hour for them to figure out how to set it up so they missed the whole first hour! 
We found a super cool dude named John this week. He’s 21 and from El Salvador and he really likes talking with us. We had a good lesson with him and he said he would for sure read the Restoration pamphlet. He seemed to like it.
This week I had the looongest exchange of my mission. I went with our district leader Elder Jelderks and he came into our area. We didn’t have any lessons planned so all we did was find all day long. It didn’t turn out too bad.
The weather here went really cold literally overnight! We just got hit with the cold and it has stayed cold ever since that first cold day! And to make it better, we found out our heater doesn’t work in our apartment...we have been chilling here in 54° in our apartment.
Saturday was the very first day on my mission where we woke up and looked at the plans and realized we didn’t have to plan for the day because literally everything was already planned out. We actually had some Fútbol 🥅 in the morning and there were a lot of non members there! and then we drove down to Centreville for Elder Andersen and then drove back and had the Collins take us to a baptism way down in Alexandria. It was great to see the Old Town Members again. A lady there that Elder Lawson found was baptized.
Other than that, nothing else really went down. I’ll share some insights I took from Elder Neil L. Andersen. He said, “Look to heaven to the One that you owe all.” And “during difficulties, we hang on to our faith and our covenants.” Love that. Hope you all have an awesome week!
Fútbol and a member’s puppy
Dear All,
This week was kinda slow. We had interviews with President Huntsman on Tuesday and they went really well! He complimented me that I have matured a lot and things that used to make me anxious and uneasy don’t even make me flinch now. It felt good to hear that. Interviews were on Halloween. We didn’t do anything special, Pres. Huntsman isn’t doing any groups of missionaries together anymore so we didn’t watch a movie as a zone at a members home like last year 
but we were left to decide for ourselves what to do but we couldn’t go out proselyting. We stayed in and did some studies. I like that he trusts us to do what we think is best.
I’ve started teaching my companion Spanish more seriously now. He is 1/2 Hispanic and grew up understanding Spanish but not speaking it back to his mom (whose from Nicaragua). We’re doing 2-3 language studies in the week as a companionship and we’re basically going back to basics. I imagine it would be hard when you are raised speaking Spanish one way and then trying to learn it from a whole different perspective. Ahí estamos. Elder Lawson has helped me a lot. He is helping me personally to be more bold and show love for the people more.
We finally had correlation last night. Our WML and his Family were visiting in Mexico for the past 2 weeks so it was good to have them back. I feel like their house is my house!
Well that’s basically all I can think of that happened this week. We didn’t find any people this week ☹️ that’s why it was kinda slow. We went to Ross today and we are about to head out to eat at Carolina Brothers, it’s this bbq pit owned by a member so missionaries eat free! 
so awesome. Well, thank you guys for your support. I’ve been very appreciative of it. Have an awesome week!!
I couldn’t do 2 weeks in a row without pics so...here’s a random selfie and bumper sticker
Dear All,
It’s one of the greatest things to see: your beloved investigators standing in the waters of baptism holding on to the wrist of your companion. Another is the difference and change of attitude made in your companion after having baptized someone. Noelia and Nailea were baptized this Saturday! And what was great was that they were also confirmed the same night due to the primary program we had on Sunday! I have come to truly love the Montano family, I love these kids!!
So Elder Richardson baptized Nailea and Elder Larsen, who trained E. Richardson, baptized Noelia. It was such a great experience and good for their dad because he’s not a member but he seemed to really love the baptismal service. Now we’re gonna work on their 2 cousins, Andrew and Julianna. They’re so awesome!!!
We had transfers before all this and we got Elder Lawson again! He’s so funny. He’s so good with just talking real to people. Elder Lawson actually started his mission in the English program in Sterling Park so he’s back in the exact same area just Spanish speaking! So he took us to swing by some old investigators of his and they were awesome to meet! He’s such a jolly guy!
We also had a visit from the Pickett Clan haha Pickett and his family returned to visit the mission and they took us out to Pupusa Loca and we got some more pizza sized pupusas!! They’re great, it was great to see him.
I have 4 months left. With that said, I attended the “Endure to the End” meeting our mission has for missionaries with 3-4 transfers left (I have 3 left). It’s basically a “don’t get trunky” meeting lol it was good. I set a goal to work on having more love for my comps...cuz it’s something I can work on. We all signed the banner that Pres. + Sister Huntsman have to commit to endure to the end.
Not a whole lot happened lesson-wise because we went by the Montanos every day to make sure they were prepared and good to go for the baptism. So Sunday rolls along and we have church and everything. We actually had the primary program and it was so great! We got a call right after coming home from church and it was President Huntsman. He right then asked Elder Richardson to pack up and get ready to head down to Woodbridge that night...noooo! He said he didn’t even know until an hour before calling. A missionary in Woodbridge is going home early last second notice and so President had to break up the trio to fill the gap. So...we visited the Montanos and the Chirinos for Richardson’s last time after packing and they both gave him cake because it was actually his birthday on Sunday!!! Worst birthday surprise ever right? We spent good time with them and Richardson said goodbye. Then we drove an hour down to Woodbridge and we got Richardson to Elder Cottle down there.
That’s basically all that happened this week. We didn’t even get a whole week in as the trio! Man...now Elder Lawson and I are here. We just played some b-ball 
and it had been a loooong time since I played so I’m kinda dead. Hope you all have a good one!
See you back in Spanish Fork Elder Harding!
Pickett Clan
Endure to the end
Baptism!
Dear All,
Lots of different events went down this week! What a week! We had 2 exchanges this week and the first one was with our zone leaders Elders Baxter and Meldrum. I went with Meldrum in their area and it was a pretty normal ordinary exchange. My comp was stressing because Elder Baxter intimidated him and he was leading out the area for the night. It was good though. We had the next exchange the very next day with our district leader. I went with Elder Skousen and we talked a lot about past experiences and missionaries because we’ve known each other forever! He was the first English Elder I met out here in Virginia. We taught the Montano girls and their cousins together and they loved Elder Skousen. It was great. Together we also dropped this guy named Victor Agüero....he is literally impossible to teach. He just shared one-breath stories nonstop and would ask us to let him finish his stories whenever we tried to cut him off. We sat there for an hour and probably talked 5 minutes of those 60.
What made this week special was that we had a stake correlation on Saturday at the Oakton Stake Center. We had to wake up early for it though but it was nice. I felt like it was out of place for us missionaries and more for the WMLs and Ward missionaries. The only thing that was for us was the words of our mission president and he was the best speaker by far out of all of them haha that threw off our day because we weren’t used to being awake for an extra hour so Saturday seemed really long.
This week we got 4 investigators to church! It was amazing! And we found out what’s happening for transfers and me and Elder Richardson and I are staying together, BUT Elder Lawson is coming back to me to be in a trio AGAIN!! This is my fourth trio! We will be together tomorrow. So we will be the 3 Sons!!! Thompson, Richardson and Lawson lol. Don’t have a lot of time so I’ll just let pics tell ya the rest. Love you all!
So we did our weekly planning this week in our homemade bathroom sauna lol why not? Note we blocked up all vents and cracks!! It was soooo hot!
District photos and the farewell of Hermana Van and Elder Skousen 
So our odometer hit 1515 on the 15th driving back from our chapel at 1515 Poplar Grove Dr....
Love his letters, smile, perspective and general goodness. Can't wait to see my "seventh son" in a few months.
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